Assessing the administration’s foreign policy

You know, the folks who promised us engagement … “reset”, etc. The one’s who told us how bad the other guy and his terrible foreign policy were. You remember. Well, here’s a CNN columnist’s view:

America’s foreign policy has gone into a tailspin. Almost every major initiative from the Obama administration has run into sharp, sometimes embarrassing, reverses. The U.S. looks weak and confused on the global stage.

Hey, if even CNN can’t spin this mess positively who can, and this lady doesn’t even try (well, she tries, but not very hard and certainly not very convincingly). In fact, she hits upon a very concise description of our foreign policy’s state. In fact, they’d like to have the state of foreign affairs George Bush left them.

U.S. relations with Russia officially settled into a trough this week when President Obama canceled a summit planned for next month with Vladimir Putin, familiar surroundings for two countries that regularly approach each other only to turn away in disappointment.

The White House decision to call off the summit, announced Wednesday, marked the end of Obama’s attempt to revive a relationship that by 2008 had reached its lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union!? … and some say before its fall. Quite a “reset” – back 30 years. Does anyone wonder why Russia felt froggy enough to keep Snowden? See “weak and confused on the global stage”.

A headline in a major Egyptian state newspaper this week referred to the proposed U.S. envoy to Egypt as the “Ambassador of Death.” Posters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, a center of pro-government rallies, depict President BarackObama with a beard and turban, exclaiming his “support for terrorism.”

Another large Egyptian newspaper alleged Sen. JohnMcCain, who traveled to Cairo this week in an effort to break a deadlock between the government and its Islamist rivals, has chosen sides by employing Muslim Brotherhood staffers in his office.

[…]

The moves highlight the depth of public distrust of U.S. policies, and draw from a “reservoir of anti-Americanism and conspiratorial theories,” said Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and a former senior Obama administration adviser.

America, he says, has few fans in the country after the 2011 overthrow of U.S. ally HosniMubarak and last month’s military ouster of Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi. “We’re caught in a situation of having to essentially try to find a balance between our values and our interests. It satisfies nobody,” Mr. Nasr said. “The Mubarak people are unhappy with the way he was shoved off without a thank you. The military thinks we coddled the Brotherhood and didn’t intervene to control them. And the Brotherhood thinks that we never supported them when they needed support, and then gave the green light to the military.”

Or said another way, this administration screwed the pooch about every way it can be done. And that’s after that fabulous Cairo speech too. Go figure?

Then there’s Benghazi, al Qaeda setting our open and closed times on Middle Eastern embassies, spying on Europe and giving Israel the cold shoulder … not to mention the apology tour.

Yes, it’s an unmitigated disaster.

But don’t worry – when Hillary finally runs for president, my guess she’ll still be haled as the greatest Secretary of State evah!

9 Responses to Assessing the administration’s foreign policy

Obama’s foreign policy of “Leading from behind” is one of the greatest jokes of all time. “Leading from Behind” where I come from is a euphemism for FOLLOWING and he is not even very good at that. All of the examples McQ presents is only the tip of the iceberg for this President’s foreign policy failures. The US is the laughing stock of the world and Obama doesn’t even get the joke.

Assess the administration’s foreign policy? What foreign policy? A foreign policy requires having some understanding of the real world interests, resources, friends and opponents of one’s nation. This administration doesn’t even have a nation, only a portion of one, about 12% of this one. What? Remember Mr. Holder talking about being the AG for “his people”? He wasn’t talking about the United States, he was talking about only the black people in the U.S. The President has the same problem: only black people are “his people”. That’s okay, because whether we voted for him or not, whether we like his policies – such as they are – or not, he <strong>is</strong> the President of the United States until the end of his second term. Big ears and all, we’re stuck with him. His tragic failure to understand that he <strong>really is</strong> supposed to be the president of the entire country, not just those who are black and who voted for him.

“Assess the administration’s foreign policy? What foreign policy?”
He gave a speech.
It is not his fault if everyone didn’t trip over themselves in fawning sycophancy. Oh, and he inherited this mess from Bush.

I think you left out a key part of foreign policy: principles.
And that is certainly a void in the Obamic Decline’s foreign policy. We hear a lot of how “we have not always acted according to our best values” in the Obama speeches.
I’d be happy if we could see that Obama KNEW any American values. Sharing them would be gravy with this regime.
But that is a vacant hope.